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Tainted water to be dumped into sea

TOKYO: Japan plans to dump 11,500 tonnes of radioactive water at sea to regain storage space at its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant for more highly contaminated water, the plant's operator said yesterday.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Company said the water was only weakly radioactive.

''We have no choice but to release water tainted with radioactive materials into the ocean as a safety measure,'' a government spokesman, Yukio Edano, said.

Tokyo Electric also plans to build an undersea silt barrier to stop the leak of radioactive fluids from its crippled nuclear station after attempts to block the flow of contaminated water failed.

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The announcement followed a failed attempt on Sunday to clog a cracked pit at the Fukushima power plant with a mixture of sawdust, shredded newspaper and absorbent plastic polymer, similar to that used in nappies.

Water with high amounts of radioactive iodine has been spewing directly into the Pacific Ocean from a large crack discovered on Saturday in a 1.8 metre-deep pit at the plant.

Experts estimate that about seven tonnes of radioactive water escape hourly from the pit. Safety officials have said the water, which appears to be from the damaged No. 2 reactor, contains 1 million becquerels a litre of iodine 131, or about 10,000 times the levels normally found in water at a nuclear plant.

The leak may not pose a severe threat, said Kathryn Higley, the professor of nuclear engineering and radiation health physics at Oregon State University.

''You're likely to have a footprint in the soil and the sands and sediments as that material leaks out but the impact is likely to be pretty minimal.

''Even if it does get out into that marine environment, that area around there has been pretty badly torn up, so there's not a lot of life to [feel the impact].''

❏ A dog rescued from a floating roof two kilometres off the battered coast of Miyagi prefecture was reunited with its owner yesterday. Two-year-old Ban jumped into the arms of her owner, a woman in her 50s, who recognised the animal in a television report from an animal shelter.

''I recognised her immediately after seeing her face,'' she said, hugging Ban. ''I am happy that she seems healthy. I want to cherish her when I take her back.''